This invention relates to a lightweight stenographic machine and more particularly to such a machine with separate and additional number keys.
A patentability search hereon has revealed the following prior United States Patents:
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. Date Inventor ______________________________________ 1,324,551 December 9, 1919 W. S. Ireland 1,591,299 July 6, 1926 G. E. Etherton 2,325,612 August 3, 1943 W. V. Kirkpatrick 3,970,185 July 20, 1976 D. L. Shelton 4,765,764 August 23, 1988 J. P. Lefler ______________________________________
Only Lefler and Shelton will be described here.
Lefler appears to be an all-electronic system with a stenographic transcription and translating assembly with word processing capabilities. Horizontal and vertical groupings of keys indicate generation of signals characterized in consonant and vowel letters or non-phonetic language construction. Command instructions call for transcribing, translation or word processing.
Shelton presents a syllabic typewriter keyboard to produce typed copy with conventional spelling, the keyboard being particularly characterized by all the control keys being located at the ends of the keyboard, except the upper case shift keys located elsewhere. Separate keys are provided for numerals.
The advent of all-electronic operation of stenographic machines has enabled substantial weight reduction and has made possible the achievement of other advantages as well, such as enabling adjustment to a lighter and shallower depth of touch, and enabling any place in a transcript to be found without a manual search of the transcript. Furthermore, the all-electronic feature provides simultaneous translation capability without extra hardware.
The present invention presents an improvement over the most pertinent prior art, as typified by Lefler and Shelton, by providing optimal keyboard configuration for an all-electronic stenographic machine with minimal keyboard size and goes further than Shelton as far as ease of use goes. By providing separate numeral keys, Shelton gets rid of the clumsy number bar, and is a step in the right direction, in that individual keys are easier to hit than a number bar.
The present invention goes further than Shelton by providing additional numeral keys for numerals "5" and "0", in a location where the additional keys are most convenient.
Also, the present invention enables use of either state-of-the art technologies including flashram and static ram, or non-volatile memory including a conventional hard disk drive, in either case with a 3.5 inch diskette drive.
It is an important object of the invention to provide a stenographic machine that attains the foregoing and other advantages.